We are coming into the fourth quarter of 2017 and there is a lot to think about this time of year. My goal has always been to be proactive with all my office systems so, when you end a day, a month or a year, you feel good that you have done your best and you can celebrate with your team from all your successes. Doing your best and managing your systems is always a success. So let’s talk about some of the things you need to drill down into for the end of the year and getting ready for the new year coming into sight.
- This is a great time to reach out to patients who have unscheduled treatment and remaining dental benefits to use up. In your Dentrix software, you can run a list by using the Treatment Manager and filtering it by remaining dental benefits. You can use this list to call patients and send a custom Quick Letter for follow up. The Quick Letter can merge in patient information for a personalized touch.
- Depending on your state, you might need to send a check to the Department of Revenue for any unclaimed credit balances. If you have been monitoring your Credit Balance Report throughout the year, you might already know what patients have not claimed their credit balances. If you have to send a check to the Department of Revenue, make sure you have a protocol in place for the adjustment and inactivating the account.
- Now would be a great time to start, if you haven’t already, monitoring your practice production goals in the computer. In Dentrix, you can enter your monthly production goals and see how your month is progressing by using the monthly calendar in the upper left of the appointment book. You can also track your monthly production goals vs actual production scheduled with the Daily Huddle Report. You have three more months left in the year so let’s get a move on.
- It never hurts to start your planning for the next year. Now might be a good time to start evaluating your office fees and getting ready for an annual fee update in January. You can start putting an expiration date on your current treatment plans that you want to honor current fees so, when you do a fee increase, you can filter the treatment plans by expiration date. Also, you can export your current fee schedule into an Excel spreadsheet to see how different increase percentages would change your current fees and how it will affect your total production numbers in the future.
Being proactive with your management systems helps you run a successful business and a dental practice is most certainly a small business. Hopefully our tips today will help you manage your dental practice more successfully and help give your team some guidance on some best practices.
